After a tease from Vic Gundotra yesterday, Google has now announced a major update for its official Google+ Android app today. The application update acts as the 42nd change to the 41 already announced changes to Google+ web version that were introduced at the recently concluded I/O 2013.

“Everyone knows that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42. So in addition to last week’s 41 new features, we’re launching another major update: a brand new Android app. Here’s a quick look at the improvements in photos, location, and the stream,” Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of Product, Google+ noted in a blog post.

As you can expect, the update is a huge one. It brings the new photos experience that debuted in the web version to the app and also clubs Google+ Messenger to Hangouts, in fact removes it from your phone as Hangouts has already reached your Android devices.

Here is a quick look at new photos experience on Google+ Android app:

Auto Backup, to safely and privately store your photos as you snap them

Auto Highlight, to browse a selection of top shots from every set of photos you add

Auto Enhance, to make subtle improvements to the people and places in your images, automatically

Auto Awesome, to create fun new versions of your pictures (like animations and panoramas) based on the photos in your library

The update also brings Snapseed’s photography tools — from filters like Drama and Retrolux to more specific controls like saturation and contrast — in the Google+ app.

This is not all; the update also brings a new locations tab in the app, which shows your friends’ current location on a map. Google has also added hashtag pages to help you see all the related content at one place.

“Last week we talked about how most feeds are rather flat. You can swipe through stuff that’s been shared with you, but it’s really hard to read more about a particular topic. We introduced related hashtags as a way to fix this problem, and today we’re bringing them to the Android app. These Google-added tags will appear at the top-right of individual posts (#GoogleIO2013, in this example), and tapping on them will reveal streams of relevant content,” Horowitz added in the blog post.